What I've Done (2 page)

But it is not my mother that looks back at me now—she left long ago. The broken down, drug addict of a woman who stands before me only cares about one thing and has lost everything else in her life to have it.

I watch her with narrowed eyes. “Is it really the social worker you’re afraid of, or do you owe someone money again?”

In the past year there had been two terrifying incidents in which a few rough looking men had come looking for my mother, demanding money for drug transactions. Their names–Johnny and Clay–became taboo words my mother would only utter in fear. She was always afraid that they would return one day to kill her, maybe even harm me and my little sister as well. Clay was a short and thin younger man with a baby face but a horrible laugh from too many cigarettes. Johnny was a much bigger and very unattractive man probably somewhere in his 50s with a fat belly that lapped over his belt. I was more terrified of Johnny with his crooked, rotten teeth that would make me cringe every time he gave our mother his menacing smile.

The first time they came to visit I was able to give them money from our emergency fund, which left us unable to pay our rent the next month. The second time they returned there wasn’t any money to spare, so the man named Johnny pulled our mother outside by her hair. She screamed at me the whole time to stay inside with Rose. I took my little sister into my bedroom and locked the door. Rose eventually fell asleep when the horrific noises from outside stopped, but I sat awake in fear all night, wondering if they had actually killed her.

Later that night I snuck into my mother’s room to check on her. It took me a minute to find her curled into a ball, leaning against her mattress. In the morning she was sporting a dark blue and purple bruise around her eye and was unable to walk. When the pain got to be too much later in the day, our neighbor Adele took her to the emergency room. Our mother returned with crutches and a leg cast. I later heard her telling someone over the phone that some of her ribs were cracked as well.

Watching my mother now as she packs her bag with such urgency, I am convinced there really is something more going on.

“It doesn’t matter who is after us,” she mumbles, which to me sounds like a resounding yes–she
does
owe someone money. “We are leaving.”

As we stand staring each other down, I know it is no use arguing with her. She is well past the days of listening to reason.

* * *

When my mother shoves tickets at us in the bus station, I don’t ask where the money came from, even though I know the only cash we have is in my own pocket. Furious that she is making us move without even getting to pack our things, I take Rose to sit as far away from her as the open spots will allow in the dark seats that have a foul, musty odor to them.

I also don’t dare ask where she is taking us, although as we had boarded the bus I noticed the sign above the door read SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. I am angry that we are going so far away from the life we know and it seems so random that she would choose California. More than anything I am surprised she actually has plans to leave the state this time. Normally it would have upset me to be leaving my small circle of friends behind, but I realize things are different now and they may not want to see me again anyway. Admittedly, the thought of going somewhere warm where we don’t have to deal with high heating bills or new snow pants and gloves also grabs my interest. It is somewhat exciting to think Rose and I may actually get to see the ocean for the first time in our lives.

A few hours after leaving the station, Rose grows restless from the mostly unchanging scenery so I give her a snack I had thrown together with the sparse groceries that remained in the apartment. She is always so easy to please after growing up with next to nothing and it doesn’t take much for me to entertain her on the long bus ride.

Our mother twists around in her seat to check on us for the first and only time, but she doesn’t smile or acknowledge me in any way. Her eyes merely meet my gaze for a moment before she turns back around.

As I grew older I began to understand that our mother never dealt properly with my father’s death and she eventually fell into a deep depression. It was as if losing the love of her life was too much to bear and something just broke inside of her.

A few months after his death we had to give our house back to the bank when my mother couldn’t make the payments. My father made decent money but later I would learn my mother had spent it faster than he realized. We were forced to move away from the only home I had ever known and give our dog Snickers to a shelter so we could live in a small apartment with a girlfriend of my mother’s. The friend asked us to leave a few weeks later when mother made it clear she had no intentions of helping to pay the rent.

My mother was only able to keep waitressing jobs for a short while before she would get fired for not showing up too many times in a row. Then there were a number of days she said she just couldn’t get out of bed. We lived off public assistance for the most part and stayed in low income housing.

Sometime during my middle school years she began bringing random men home from the bars. She doesn’t know which one fathered my little sister Rose, but that didn’t stop her from trying to take a few different men to court to get child support. I heard the lady from Human Services tell my mother none of them passed the blood test proving they were the father.

After my thirteenth birthday she announced we were moving into a house with David, a boyfriend she had just met the week before. We weren’t there long before he started beating her. I didn’t know what to do the first time I saw it happen. I just stood there in shock and began shaking until it was over. My mother limped over to my side and held me after he left. She continued to put up with David’s abuse toward her for a few weeks until he picked Rose up by her arm and threw her across the room. I will never forget the image of her little body smashing into the dining room table and then laying lifeless on the floor. I was sure that she was dead and had screamed until my voice gave out.

Our mother immediately called 9-1-1 and we were put into foster care for the very first time. We never saw David again. Rose had some broken ribs from the incident so she spent almost the entire time in the hospital while I stayed with an elderly couple who liked their alcohol and cigarettes more than having a child living with them. Fortunately our mother cooperated with the social workers and was able to get us back in her care within a few months.

We are past the Colorado border when Rose falls asleep on my lap. Her chest rises slightly with each little snore she makes. I don’t know how long I sit and watch the darkness pass us by while stroking my little sister’s head until sleep eventually finds me, too.

When I wake again, the road signs show we have crossed the California border. Rose plays with an old, somewhat unscathed Barbie doll wearing a pink party dress that I once found in the good will dumpster. It is one of the few toys she has been able to keep and has become her favorite treasure.

Most of the people on the bus are also awake at this point. Looking to where my mother is sitting, I discover her to thankfully still be asleep. The last thing I need is for her to wake and decide she needs more of whatever her current drug of choice is. I don’t know how I would begin to calm her down on a bus full of strangers.

“How did you sleep?” I ask Rose, brushing her wild curls away from her face.

“Good,” her little sing-song voice answers as she continues playing with her doll.

My heart breaks when I think of how my little sister has grown up so poor, without knowing the love of a real mother or father. I do the best I can to keep her clean and well fed, but the rest of the things she needs either don’t come easily or not at all.

It wasn’t until around my seventeenth birthday that our mother’s drug use began. At that time we had been living in the same small apartment complex south of the metro area for almost a whole year and I was beginning to feel happy for the first time in what seemed like forever.

I had taken an interest in sewing, thanks to a home economics class and the caring teacher who let me use the school’s sewing machine after school hours. With items I found at the Salvation Army I was able to make somewhat fashionable things for myself and Rose to wear.

Our mother was already a raging drunk when she switched over to drugs and rarely left the apartment, so I never brought anyone home. There was always the danger that someone would find a pipe laying around the house or notice that far away, vacant look in her eyes she got just after smoking whatever white powdered drug she was using at the time.

But when I was at school and knew Rose was safe at a county-paid daycare, I was a totally different person, surrounded by a handful of pretty good friends who, at one time anyway, I was able to keep my secrets from.

It was always fairly easy to plan stories about my home life. I would pretend my parents were still happily married but said that both were total workaholics to explain their lack of presence at school functions. I maintained the fantasy that we still lived in a pretty little house with a puppy and white picket fence.

Some of my friends’ parents would let me come over often without asking a lot of questions about why I didn’t spend more time at my own house. For a time, I even got to experience what it would feel like to have a normal family that loved me and ate meals together. My grades continued to stay pretty decent, despite everything, and I never did anything that could be considered illegal or immoral.

Last week I had convinced my mother to let me attend the semi-formal winter dance at school. I arranged for our neighbor Adele to watch Rose, knowing my mother would be off on another drinking and drug binge for the night. Although we have been living entirely off of the welfare system, my mother has always found a way to get the alcohol she needs. I try not to actively think of the ways she goes about procuring it.

My best friend Tasha Fryman invited me to her house that night where we spent hours getting ready for the dance. She has always been shy to the point of it almost being painful and had never really asked questions about me, even though I knew they were weighing heavily on her mind.

We shared many afternoons in her bedroom over the past few months, listening to Jack Johnson—my favorite musician who also became Tasha’s once she discovered him—and talking about boys we had crushes on. Her room was the only place I was ever able to feel like a normal teenage girl. It was there I was able to fantasize about becoming a musician like my father. I do not have a singing voice made for the public to hear, but I share his love of the guitar and hope one day I will have enough money to buy one and learn how to play.

Everything about that night of the semi-formal had been magical, from the growing circle of friends I was surrounded by to the way I felt like any other kid and even somewhat popular. Tasha had curled my dirty blond curls and let me borrow her glittery pink cocktail dress that sparkled in the disco lights.

That night I even experienced my first long and slow kiss with Tommy Rogers, another friend I had spent a lot of time with. The kiss was somewhat awkward at first as I had only kissed with closed lips in the past and wasn’t sure what to do, but Tommy was a good kisser and gentle about teaching me.

I was able to laugh and goof around with my classmates like a typical teenage girl at the dance, nearly forgetting what was waiting for me at home.

But I should have known it was too good to be true, long before the police came toward the end of the night looking for me. Tommy and Tasha both stood with their mouths agape as the officers explained Rose had run away after the sitter had fallen asleep and that my mother had been arrested for starting a fight at a bar downtown. I was so embarrassed that I stood there in total silence, wishing I could crawl under something and hide away from the world.

As I was escorted outside by the officers, my friends looked back at me with blank expressions. I don’t think they knew what to say to me. I had lied to them about my life. They had always been there for me and maybe would have understood if I had told them the truth from the start, but it was too late—all the lies I had told them about having a perfect family had been shattered by that one incident.

With my help the police officers were able to find Rose a short while later. She was inside an ice cream shop she always stopped to look in the window of, just blocks from our apartment. We were once again taken to an emergency foster care since our mother would be spending the night in jail. When she came to pick us up the next day, I knew she was still under the influence of something other than alcohol.

That night I couldn’t sleep with the burden of knowing my life would never improve. I decided Rose would be better off with some kind of foster family rather than having to deal with the drama our mother’s lifestyle brought with it. Later when I knew my mother and Rose were asleep, I swallowed down a bottle of my mother’s pain killers, hoping to put a stop to the misery.

My mother found me shortly after I became unresponsive and called an ambulance. I am told that I was actually dead for part of the ride to the hospital. Once there they pumped the pills out of my stomach and I was put on a suicide watch.

When I think back to that night I regret what I had done, and not just because of all the added problems I brought to our family. It is clear to me now that my little sister needs me, and foster care isn’t the best option as I had once thought it would be. From experience I know foster parents aren’t always loving or pleasant. It was selfish of me and I am embarrassed that I gave up—it wasn’t fair to either one of us.

As the number of miles to San Diego becomes less, the snow has completely disappeared from the ground outside. Rose sits alert on her heels to see better out the window. I can tell the way her big eyes take in the palm trees and blue sky that she is amazed by what will be our new home. Excitement has yet to find me since I don’t know if our mother has even arranged for a place for us to stay.